Ascendance
by Apheliongirl
Summary: Joker goes for ascendance.


Ascendance

I: Heist

Everything hinges on this act – this _statement_ – and he knows it. He can feel its gravity; he can feel the future bearing down on him with the weight of inevitability.

Cars whiz by as he stands on the corner, bag in one hand, clown mask in the other. Drivers glance wide-eyed at the white face with kohl-black eyes and red gash of a mouth.

Heads turn. Fingers point.

At first, the faces smile, but seeing the garish lips and blackened eyes, their amusement wanes, fades, descends into unease, and then their faces collapse into _fear_.

The fear is primordial. It is mindless, wordless. The fear of prey for its predator.

_Yes_, he thinks, glee building inside. _Be afraid. You __should__ be._

Now as he waits for Grumpy to pick him up, his desire for success is so great he can almost taste it. It is like that earthy tang of copper when blood fills your mouth after the slicing pain of a razor dulls enough that your senses return and you can taste once more.

The thrill of action after so long an exile is enough to bring him back to life. Months, _years_, of persisting through the mundane day to day struggle of his life - not living – merely _surviving – _are over.

Survival is not enough any longer.

He must _prevail_.

He can feel frenetic energy flowing through him as if his whole body was one giant capacitator made of nerve, muscle, bone and sinew. Emotions tightly coiled inside him wait to burst out like water through a sluice or blood through an artery. But he mustn't let them, for control is everything. Keeping it inside, channelling it, using it. That is what he must do to succeed.

To unleash chaos requires the utmost control. The dialectic of that truth is endlessly amusing to him. He delights in its contradiction.

Despite attempting to pull of the biggest heist of a mob bank in history, he doesn't care about the money. Money never made him happy. It's a means to an end, nothing more, but nothing less either. Money makes the world go round – to everyone else. He must take their money only to show them he _can_.

That's it. _To_ _show them he __can_. He is able. Capable. A threat.

A force to reckon with.

The van drives up and a door opens, ushering him one more step closer to achieving his first act of ascendance.

Inside, insipid conversation irritates him, causing his skin to almost crawl with the banality of their motives and goals.

A _share_. That's it – crass financial gain. They are willing, eager, to kill each other, to kill hostages if necessary, for a share.

He can barely stand to be in their presence. He is so far beyond them he is a titan among Lilliputians.

_Losers all_.

Little men with no imagination, with no vision, with no overarching motive than to get more money, to get more _things_, to fuck more women, to drink more booze or do more drugs.

Instead, every last one of them will rot in the grave with nothing to show for it but failure.

Not _him_.

He will _succeed_. His exit will be the stuff of legends.

When they finally _kill_ him, and kill him they _must_, he will live on in their collective minds as a stark reminder of the bogey man in the closet ready to spring when the door creaks open, the monster under the bed reaching out to grasp an unwitting foot, the dark fear lurking in the back of your mind like a slow-growing cancer not making itself known until it's too late for anything except regret.

"_He thinks he can sit it out and still take a slice then I know why they call him the Joker."_

Grumpy and the others will learn all too soon why they call him the Joker.

The joke's on _them_.

And he will laugh and laugh and _laugh_.

The last laugh will be his. And it will be _so good._

The car screeches to a halt outside the bank and they jump out, assault weapons in hand, his bag of tricks at the ready. He pauses long enough in the entry to let the camera catch his face. He knows Gordon and his men will pore over it and the tapes, trying to guess who he is. Even Batman will be drawn to his image, passing it over in his mind, wondering who he is.

Who is the man behind the mask?

They won't know. They _can't_ know because there is nothing _behind_ the mask.

There is only _him_. Getting him will consume their every waking moment.

"_Look at me,"_ he thinks, mirth building in his gut. _"See __me__, see my grin. Feel my taunting smile. Come and __get me__."_

After Grumpy gets their attention with a loud spray of automatic gunfire, Chuckles runs into the vault and starts his work. People scream and duck, some cower, others stand in mute incomprehension – they're the ones who deserve to die, so comfortable in their sense of security that they don't even _feel_ danger, they don't _perceive_ threat.

_They_ have never felt it grip their guts like a vice, priming their nerves, their heart racing, their senses on edge. Live or die is a state _they_ have never experienced. Instead, _they_ stand tall, impatience on their faces, angered that someone dares interrupt _them_ as they go about their oh-so-very-important business.

He'd like to blow _them_ away – the self-satisfied pampered woman standing with her Gucci purse and coifed hair, her mouth an 'oh' of affront; the dapper man in the thousand-dollar Armani suit with a "How dare you?" expression on his doughy face.

But there is no need for heroics and if he's learned one thing in his time, it's that overkill invites heroism. No need for overkill. Control is _everything_.

One young slip of a woman barely out of her teens, dark tangled hair and dark-circled eyes, thrift-store clothes, junkie tracks on her thin pale forearm, crouches down behind a pillar, her hands over her head, eyes pressed tightly shut, her chest heaving.

Unlike the pampered woman in powder blue, _she's_ known danger – he can sense it like a dog senses fear. He understands for just a second the trauma she's lived through, the threat she lives _with_ to be so fast to hide, to comply. He'd like to pause for a moment, suspend time, pull her hands away from her head, force her to open her eyes, and then draw out her story, but time is of the essence.

He taps her on the nose and her eyes blink open. Her dark eyes are huge and wet, her gaze moving over his mask, into his eyes, fear building as she takes him in.

Oh, how he loves that _fear_ – so palpable, so intense. It makes him feel _alive_.

He reaches into his bag and pulls out a smoke grenade instead of a live one, the very slightest quantum of sympathy for her breaching his usual lack of empathy. He places it between her hands. When he pulls the pin, he nods. Something clicks in her mind and she thinks she knows what it is she holds in her hands.

Her whole body trembles so deliciously that he'd love to feel it against him, but he has no time. Instead, he squeezes her hands around the grenade, showing her how to keep it from detonating.

A shotgun blast fills the silence and he skitters away from the girl and crouches behind a table. His mind works furiously – can't be cops unless the silent alarm guy fucked up. Several more shots ring out and Grumpy asks him how many are left.

Stupid fuck can't even count for himself?

He holds up his fingers, indicating there are two shots left. After two more blasts, Grumpy stands and gets blasted. Joker grins, but sadly, Grumpy is only winged.

Joker stands and blasts the gunman in the knees. A bank official with a sawed-off shotgun. He could have _killed_ him, but the man has _balls_. He was willing to take a risk, to come out firing. That counts for _something_.

Joker respects two things – those with balls and survivors. Sometimes one person has both qualities, most of the time not. He lets big-balls live.

They empty the vault, stepping over the dead bodies of Happy and Chuckles. Finally, once the last of the duffels is plopped onto the floor, Grumpy makes his move, jamming his gun in Joker's back.

Just in time too. Joker side-steps and hardly even flinches when the bus crashes through the door into the building, pinning Grumpy against the teller's cage.

Then, when the bags are loaded, he dispatches the driver, not even giving it a second thought.

"_Criminals in this town used to believe in things,"_ big-balls says as he writhes in pain. _"Honor. Respect. What do you believe, huh? What do you bel-."_

Joker doesn't want to _kill_ the man. He shares that sentiment. But big-balls does need to learn a lesson. Joker decides to teach him a bit of humility – a lesson he'll remember for a long while.

He slips a smoke grenade in big-balls' mouth.

"_I believe that what doesn't kill you,"_ he says, glancing around at the people who sit in mute dread, in shock and awe. _"Simply makes you __stranger__."_

He removes the mask, _wanting_ them all to see him, wanting the girl to see and remember, wanting big-balls to look in _his_ face.

_Feast your eyes on me._

He turns to leave, bliss filling him as he enters the bus and pulls it into the procession, the timing down to the _second_.

_Let the bells ring out and the banners fly._

_I'm here._

Ascendance Part Two: Group Therapy

#

_This is the way the world ends . . .**1**_

As he prepares mentally for his performance at the meeting, the lines of a poem fill Joker's mind. Sitting in the van on the way to the hotel, he repeats them to himself as he plays with a switchblade, flipping it over in his hand, the razor-sharp edge never once even nicking his skin.

_This is the way the world ends . . ._

He examines the blade, enjoying the way its edge glints in the sunlight streaming in through the windshield. There's something so appealing about a knife, something so tactile in the heft of the hilt in your hand, the cool smooth metal slicing along skin. Joker likes guns and bombs because they kill a whole lot of people fast, but a knife is a thing of beauty.

The hotel where the mob is holding its little group therapy session is located in the financial section of Gotham's historic downtown district. Joker eyes the crowds milling down the narrow sidewalks – stuffed business suits, _drones_, running-dog lackeys to the financial elite. Everything in their lives condensed down into one thing – money.

Filthy lucre.

It's the universal language of the hollow men, the stuffed men, filled with nothing but their greedy little dreams of power, of being one up on the other guy, of buying status, of lording it over on everyone else through the size of their wallets.

Because of this, getting and keeping the attention of the mob requires little real finesse. Clean out one of their banks – _then_ their ears will prick up, because to little men with little balls, money talks. It is the mob's only measure of worth.

When $68 Million talks, the hollow men _listen_.

For _his_ next act? A little blood sport. Killing the Bat-man.

Pulling off the bank heist was easy. _Child's_ play. This petty shit is fun and games to Joker. _Fun and games._

Killing Batman – now, _that's_ a challenge worthy of his skills.

_This is the way the world ends . . ._

He flips the blade, shifts it from hand to hand. The mob leaders gathering in the hotel sicken him. The only remedy is to take over, show them how it's done in the big leagues. Luckily, it won't take much effort. Shock and awe them with a little blood. He's done shit that would make their pansy-ass assassination strong-arm Goodfella tough guy routines look like earning Boy Scout badges in comparison.

Four years of calling in air strikes, cleaning up after incinerating terrorists in red-rock caves along the Afghan border using bunker-busters, deploying "Willie Pete" – white phosphorus - in Iraq, of mopping up the stinking char of RPG-blasted convoys in Baghdad, the endless adrenaline high of patrolling the streets of Fallujah, watching as the Bradley and the men inside driving in front of you are blown to bits, picking up the pieces before moving on to fight another day.

Taking over the mob piece by piece - he could do it in his fucking _sleep_.

_This is the way the world ends . . ._

_Except_.

Except it takes time to find men worthy of placing in your trust when you're just starting out and Joker is realizing how much he misses the men in his former unit. Nothing but a thorough housecleaning will do. The clowns he's been able to collect have so far proven sub-par but Joker knows this is a temporary predicament. He'll soon take on a higher class of criminal, once the current operation comes to fruition.

The clock ticks down as Goofy drives the van along the crowded mid-afternoon streets, the traffic snarled as maintenance workers fill potholes, the jackhammer sounds of machinery grating on Joker's nerves as he glances once more at his watch.

_This is the way the world ends . . ._

"Sorry, Boss," Goofy says as he motions to the jam of cars and taxis ahead. "I didn't know they was 'plannin on 'fixin the roads today."

Joker grits his teeth. "Did you _check_ the city's road maintenance schedule?"

Goofy frowns, then rubs his forehead. He opens his mouth. "I-."

"_Don't_ bother answering."

He squelches the urge to off Goofy with a quick blast to the back of the head, for as much as that would please him now, as much as Goofy deserves it, the less attention they draw to the van and its contents the better. A professional driver, one who understood the importance of meeting deadlines, of keeping to a tight schedule, would check road maintenance plans without thinking, and take an alternate route to avoid delays.

Now Joker and his team must get out of the van a block and a half too soon. He and four clowns rush along the sidewalks, Joker taking point, using hand signals to reroute Blinky and the others down a back alley to avoid being seen by too many gawky pedestrians in case they remember him from the news and call in GPD.

_This is the way the world ends . . ._

By the time they arrive at the hotel, the meeting's been going on for almost a quarter of an hour according to his source in Maroni's little _family_. Two clowns take their place at the front and back entrance while Joker and the other two take the service elevator to the basement, to the staff room in the kitchen.

Joker takes out the sentry with his trusty HK USP Tactical silenced pistol, while the others take out the mob goons who sit waiting outside the meeting room, providing security. Heavily laden with a few little _toys_ inside his jacket, Joker slides feet first over a table beside the metal detector, not wanting to alert the mobsters of his presence. He signals to the other two clowns to wait, keeping an eye out for any staff who might wander in and cause unnecessary problems.

He stands just inside the large room in the shadows, his heart rate slowing as he prepares for his performance, his muscles steeled, blood cold, self-control a tight vice grip over his emotions.

_This is the way the world ends . . ._

He listens as Lau lays out his puny little _plan _to protect their precious money. The mobsters are scared and angry – Joker can smell it in the testosterone-rich atmosphere of the mob meeting. He waits for his moment, listening to the jabbering whining complaints of the mobsters, concerned that their ability to move freely is being constrained by the Batman. They're so afraid of the vigilante – so impotent, so _unimaginative_. They lack creative genius. They lack the balls to do what it takes.

They turn instead to a fucking _accountant_.

He can barely stand to be in the same room with them, but they're a means to an end.

_"Two bit whack job wears a cheap purple suit and make-up. He's not a problem – he's nobody."_

They'll soon learn who the _real_ nobody is.

From the darkened corner, he surveys the principals. Gambol is dolled up like a banker-pimp, his thousand-dollar suit unable to disguise his social projects origins. Maroni looks like a well-dressed peacock, his haberdashery an affectation better suited to an Edwardian dandy than a mob boss. The Chechen's greasy hair and leather jacket, his leisure suit vintage clothes– at least he has the decency of displaying his bad taste in public. He doesn't hide behind a "stylist" the way the other two do, as if they're fucking Hollywood stars.

Joker's own purple suit is his reply - farce, irony, satire - but they're too stupid to appreciate his comic genius

Joker ignores the slam for what lies behind it is a mind too small to grasp Joker's significance. While listening to Lau outline his plan, other lines from the poem fill his memory:

_Between the idea_

_And the reality_

_Between the motion_

_And the act_

_Falls the Shadow_

Oh, the shadow won't fall for Joker but it will for these losers. _He_ learned how to plan and execute operations fresh out of high school when he joined up and started putting ass on the line, running operations in every blood-and-guts war-torn backwater the military sent him, where one wrong step, one miscalculated trajectory, could get you dead _fast_.

Stand up, gentlemen – the Joker's in the room.

He can barely suppress his disgust as he pretends to laugh. _"Ho hee ha ha."_

Of course little-dick-gangsta Gambol is the first to take him on, sending over his goon like a playground monitor.

_"How about a little magic trick?"_

Joker knows that nothing gets a little boy's attention more than a little sleight of hand and so he plays one of his favourites – the disappearing pencil – where _did_ it go?

They don't even _see_ it coming.

The Chechen smiles, appreciating the trick, nodding in admiration. Joker knows he'll tell the story with relish to his own goons later. Maroni smiles as well, but Joker can tell he disapproves – he's become soft, too far removed from the action, too many layers between him and the street. He likes to think he's above the fray and that's his problem – he's lost the edge.

He's behind the eight ball.

Gambol looks like a fool, his affront that _his boy_ is dead making Joker almost crack up.

Gambol will get _his_ soon enough.

Joker lays it out for them in easy to comprehend terms, sticking it to them as he does, twisting the knife just a bit, inflicting more damage to their severely inflated very fragile bruised egos.

"_I know why you're afraid to go out at night. Batman. He's shown Gotham your true colors."_

Yellow.

Nothing makes a mobster angrier than the suggestion they are weak, cowards, but in truth, they're afraid of men with backbone. With balls.

Men like Dent.

Like Bat-man.

Joker knows that deep down inside, the mob is nothing more than a collection of schoolyard boys who couldn't make it playing by the rules of the game and so they created their own game with their own rules.

"_It's simple."_

It's so simple they can't even fucking imagine it. He has to imagine it for them. He has to show them _how it's done_.

"_Kill the Batman."_

They laugh at that – they laugh at the simplest solution. Batman has them so in awe, doubting themselves so thoroughly, that the mere suggestion of killing him sends them into hysterics.

They're _pathetic_. None of them would last a day in country.

The Chechen bites. There's still enough of the street fighter in him to know it's possible.

Of course the question they all really want answered is financial. How much does he _want?_ Frankly, he doesn't want any of their stinking money. Money is paper. It's a fucking fetishistic _mirage_. It can't substitute for action. But he'll have to take his rightful share in order to maintain credibility among them.

"_Half."_

Yes, you heard it right, boys. Half. One man. Half of the mob's fortune.

Because he's _the only one_ who has a fucking hope in hell of succeeding.

_"Ut tut tut. Let's not blow this out of all proportion."_

They're not quite ready yet to hear his offer, to take it seriously, but he knows that the seed has been planted. The small shred of doubt has been placed in the back of their minds.

_This is the way the world ends . . ._

It'll take a bit more convincing, a bit more blood, but that means nothing to Joker, who's seen - and spilled - more blood in one year behind enemy lines than one soldier should in a lifetime.

Half of all their money is a small price to pay for the freedom they once knew, or are they so cowed by the masked vigilante and the pretty-boy DA that they can't even remember?

They don't even _deserve_ to have that freedom, but Joker needs entertainment. He's been bored for too long, lying idle, in exile after the black ops unit he led was deep-sixed and he received his permanent grin.

The heist and this little offer of services? The first salvo in his strategy to turn all their little plans on their heads.

A little amusement on his way to the big _sleep_.

For Joker aims to go out with in style, taking as many with him as he can. Leaving no doubt about his message. Showing them in the process how puny their little _plans_ are.

Their little _schemes_.

_This is the way my life ends . . ._

_Not with a whimper but a_

_Big. Fucking. Bang._

1 T. S. Eliot, _The Hollow Men_.

* * *

My original novel loosely based on Maelstrom is will be available at on June 15 2012.


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